


i came a long way to see you

by neotericbitch



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 11:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20723165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neotericbitch/pseuds/neotericbitch
Summary: The last time Skulduggery Pleasant saw Darquesse, she had just cursed Erskine Ravel and saved China Sorrows. Shortly after this, she was dead. The world moved past the ordeal, leaving Skulduggery behind.





	i came a long way to see you

**Author's Note:**

> alt summary:  
same fish whole time?

It was the strangest thing, but Skulduggery found himself writing a poem dedicated to a trout. He had come to be quite a talented and prolific writer, which he knew was the case because no one had sought to tell him any differently. Yes, his home was littered with notebooks of all shapes and sizes - though the former wasn’t exactly as varied as the latter. They were old and they were new, they were old things he _ made _ new. The first pen stroke he made in one of Gordon’s half-filled journals had been entirely a mistake, one that made him feel a little sick. He had been living in the new house for three days and barely stopped himself from calling the journal’s previous owner. But that was four years ago. Now Skulduggery doodled in the spaces between Gordon’s words.

He did not write his poem in one of Gordon’s notebooks. It went where all the other fish data went: scattered between about fifteen books and a sentence fragment on his phone. The completed, compiled work went into his third fish notebook; a favourite of his for qualities including the wave pattern on its cover, the lovely spiral binding it together, and neat, middling-blue lines ruling each page. He sat cross-legged on the lake, right beside where the dead creature had floated to the previously calm surface, and stopped every now and then to look at it.

_ If it is you who lies here today _

_ With the light brown spot below your left eye _

_ Then farewell, I’m glad to have known you _

_ If it is your brother _

_ With the same brown spot on the same left eye _

_ Then I’m glad you’re fucking dead _

Fairly pleased with his work, Skulduggery closed the notebook, and sat there for three hours. He would have preferred to stay longer, and he knew he was being paranoid, but those tourists that bustled through just a week prior were still on his mind. He got up and walked across the gentle waves back home. The sun, setting just as the afternoon was really beginning, warmed the back of his skull.

He did not think much of Cemetery Road, nor did he wish to. Before he moved out he had already been a stranger in his own home for six years, opting to rarely leave his Roarhaven office after acquiring the Arbiter position. When it became too much, he gutted the place and fled and made a comfortable nest in Iceland. Sometimes, old associates had the gall to ring and check in on him; and sometimes, he had the gall to answer.

Gordon did not ring to check in. When Gordon rang, Gordon rang, and even if it had been months since they last spoke it would come as easily as anything - until he reminded Skulduggery too much of their loss. _ His _ loss. And Gordon always did, never meaning to.

Skulduggery watched the remainder of the sunset on his patio rocking chair, which he had nailed down due to the movement being too annoying. When it was dark, he made a lap around the property, lighting all his lanterns. He set up an ominous circle of candles in his living room and sat in the centre, getting back to mending one of his ties. There was little reason to wear them these days, but that didn’t make it any less important to keep them intact. He did this in silence for an hour, then a few more with the television playing at a low volume.

After eight, he turned on proper lights and began to tidy up his deliberate mess of books. The first year of living here had been especially boring, and so to spice things up Skulduggery started putting things out of place. He’d leave them that way for a bit, then put it back the way it had been. It had been a reasonable enough hobby at the time, but at some point it had begun to deteriorate without him noticing, and a few months later he was tearing up the house and screaming and roaring and throwing himself around.

He’d found a healthy balance to it eventually. Every morning he got up - miracle of all miracles, he had tailored his meditation schedule to resemble sleep more closely than ever before - and swept his dozens of books off their shelves, and at night he’d clean it all up. His house and everything in it was his whole world now. So in a way, he was still saving the world, on a different scale.

Skulduggery picked up one of Gordon’s books that had been lying open on the floor and looked at the page. Sketches of the black crystals that powered the Sceptre. Skulduggery went, “Hm,” and nodded as if the book had brought up a very interesting point, indeed, he hadn’t thought of it that way before. He closed the book and swept his hand over it like that would somehow seal it shut forever.

He put his tie away and stood staring into his walk-in wardrobe, examining his collection from a short, reverent distance, then caught his reflection and shut the door. Back in the living room he read his poem one last time. He considered the trout that had lived in that lake for the past two years, and his identical brother from the same brood, either of whom could have been the one to have died that morning. Skulduggery knew the fish in the lake quite well, he spent much of his time observing them, wondering about them. He would catch them and throw them back, just to be sure they were appreciating their lives, and that Skulduggery was a dead man and didn’t need to eat them. He was quite certain about many things about many of those fish, but not this.

He picked up the nearest pen, red and running out of ink, and made a little note at the bottom of his poem.

_ same fish whole time? _

Skulduggery heard the sound of an engine. It was loud, almost oppressive, and he could hardly imagine what a beast of a truck it belonged to. More importantly, he couldn’t imagine why a vehicle like that would be taking the road less travelled that passed by his house and his lake.

What triggered him was that as the engine grew louder, it was also slowing down. He stood very still in the front hallway as if it would help at all - but the unfortunate fact of the matter was that the lights in his house were on, which meant someone was home, which meant the idiot who had gotten themselves lost had a door to knock on for directions. Worse yet, for a phone. Worse _ yet _, for a place to stay. It was going to be a repeat of the tourists from last week, he knew, and rage and anxiety began to bubble in the air that surrounded him.

The tourists hadn’t been lost, only misinformed. They had planned a picnic out by the lake, not realised how far it would be from civilisation, and not picked up on Skulduggery’s hints for them to go away. He even told them, “Go away,” and they did not.

He swept out of the hallway and back into the living room, drawing closed the curtains on the windows as naturally as anything, looking out at the parked truck as he did so. The silhouette in the driver’s seat was indecipherable, but Skulduggery recognised the dogs for what they were, a duo piled into the back. The driver reached back to them, and though they had turned Skulduggery still couldn’t see them any better. He concluded his work at the windows and returned to the front door. He placed his gloved hand on the wall the door was attached to, prepared to hang over his uninvited guest with all the hostility he was permitted. He stood and waited. And waited. Then remembered. Undid the top button on his shirt and activated his façade. Then continued waiting.

He heard the sound of the truck’s door opening, then being slammed shut. Footfalls against grass that eventually reached the square pavers that made up the small path to the house. There was something about the walk, the rhythm of it, that picked at Skulduggery. It set off long-forgotten bells, but not ones of warning. Ones that inclined him to welcome the owner of those legs rather than ward her away.

Skulduggery could picture quite clearly how her fingers curled not completely into a fist at her side before her hand bunched tightly together, like the door was something else on her list of things to punch. She always loved doing that.

The knock at the door was the clearest sound he had heard in ten years; he almost didn’t answer so he could hear it again, test if he was just imagining things - as he tended to do. Another knock didn’t come, the person on the other side just waited. Skulduggery’s arm was shaking; he was pushing all his weight into his hand on that wall. He raised his other to the set of locks and unfastened each one, held the door handle before swinging the wood of the thing wide.

Darquesse stood with her hands in her jacket pockets, appearing very casual, hunkered as if to make herself seem non-threatening. Her smile, the cute one, was somewhat shy.

Skulduggery snatched his revolver from his shoulder holster and shot her in the heart.

* * *

“I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to live.”

“If you’re really not a threat, come with me. Let us run some tests.”

“So you can figure out how to stop me? Imprison me? No thanks. I’m out, and I have no intention of going back in. But I’m not your enemy, Skulduggery. I’m still the same girl I always was. Just, you know...don’t stand in my way.”

“What happens if I do?”

She smiled as the ceiling melted above her. “I don’t know,” she said. “But won’t it be fun finding out?”

She rose up through the ceiling, and was gone.

* * *

They tried to draw her out, but nothing got her to appear. They shunted Ravel three times. Sensitives kept their eyes shut and their minds open. Skulduggery invited himself over to every hideout Sanguine had that he knew of. She’s talking to sorcerers, Sanguine said. She’s trying to learn anything and everything she can about magic.

Months dragged on. Every weapon was at the ready, at every possible location, but no one could have ever predicted Iceland. At the volcano Hekla, there was a great explosion closely followed by an even greater eruption - and then a series that lasted the entire following week. 

With the state of the land being what it was at the time, it was difficult and dangerous for Sanguine and Low to escape; they barely managed it. Their injuries kept them confined in the British Sanctuary’s hospital for a while - and in this time, Low had to be caught up on the years missing in her memory. Sanguine claimed Darquesse took the remnant out of her before she’d flown up the volcano. She was apparently about to attempt to tear a hole in the very fabric of space. “To fight the Faceless Ones,” he said, and refused to change his story.

But it didn’t really matter what she was trying to do at the time. The point was that it failed, and she detonated. She was gone. Dead. Darquesse was dead, destroyed by her own magic, not unlike the stories of other sorcerers who had discovered their true name.

No one wanted to believe it, least of all Skulduggery, but it seemed the truth could not be fought. Ravel was free of his curse, Hekla was utterly scorched earth, and Darquesse had wiped herself off the face of the planet. All the Sensitives who had seen her were declaring her certain defeat. The future they’d glimpsed was no more; Roarhaven would stand, Valkyrie Cain’s family would live. Now it was time to start worrying about that Darkly boy.

Life went on. The world moved past the ordeal. Leaving Skulduggery behind.

He couldn’t stop himself; he stalked Stephanie for a while. She relinquished the Sceptre of the Ancients to the Irish High Sanctuary and divorced herself from the world of magic, but she’d only just been by his side, and she was so much like Valkyrie. And then she got the mortal police involved and Skulduggery decided actually he’d had enough of non-sorcerers, what good was it to hang about them anyway. He holed up in Gordon Edgely’s mansion for two months with only his host for company, and the dead men grieved.

And grieved.

And grieved.

* * *

Darquesse blinked a half dozen times before fully opening her eyes. She found herself staring at an arched ceiling, her gaze running down the grain of the wood. She followed a particular line to where it met the wall, and progressed down the brick path to the floor, where it was all wood again. Wood, brick. Hard materials. Not soft, not comfortable.

Pain tore through her chest and she gasped and gurgled blood. Her hand leapt to her breast as her wound, which had been trying to heal itself, reopened to try once again to spit the bullet out. She breathed slowly, deliberately, numbing her pain but not shutting it off entirely - she still needed to _ feel _ \- and willed the thing out of her. Her face twisted with concentration, her brow knitted and she screwed her eyes shut. It had been a little while since she’d last had to do this.

She heard the rattle of a screen door, probably leading out back. Skulduggery was still wearing a face as he came in, the expression hard in a way she knew she had missed. He came over - she was inside his house, lying on his couch, wasn’t this all so familiar - and stood so he was looking right down at her. Looming. Darquesse smiled.

“Hi,” she said, the blood pooling beneath her tongue. Gross.

“Your dogs,” Skulduggery reported, “broke your car door.”

She didn’t stop smiling. “Oh no.”

“I tied them up outside.”

“Cheers.”

He went on: “It was incredibly inconvenient. I had nothing to tie them with, and nothing to tie them to. They were very upset.”

“Well.” Darquesse groaned as she sat up on one elbow. She wiped her mouth on her shirt - whatever, it was already blood-soaked - then returned her hand to her heart, ready to pluck out the bullet as soon as it was loose enough. “You did shoot me.”

“I did.” She saw now - had seen before, but was only now thinking about it - he was again removing his revolver from its place in the holster. Only now more carefully. He held it at his side. “You were supposed to be dead.”

Darquesse said nothing. She was trying to get into a comfortable position on the stiff couch, and Skulduggery hadn’t asked a question or said something she thought warranted a response. She swung one leg up over the other and put her free hand behind her head. Once it was out, she let the bullet drop to the floor.

“You were supposed,” repeated Skulduggery, emphasising each word, “to be dead.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

His fury was cold. She was starting to not like this face that much. “Tell me how you survived. Tell me _ why you’re here _.”

“I wanted to see you. It’s been a really long time, is it so hard to believe I missed-”

The revolver was in her face now. “I know you’re not her. You can’t make me believe you’re her.”

Her wound was just about closed now, and thankfully she didn’t feel anything to suggest it would have a lasting effect on her body. Darquesse grunted and groaned as she shifted in place. The barrel followed her nose. “You can threaten me all you like, it’s not going to get you anywhere. I’m as strong as I was when you last saw me. Well, I mean - _ obviously _ I’ve gotten stronger, but one, I don’t wanna brag, and two, you did get a good hit on me just now. But that’s just because I’m out of practise.”

The revolver was trembling. She sat forward, reached both hands out, and closed them around his. Darquesse pulled Skulduggery’s hand down so the revolver pointed at her leg, and in this time he made no attempt to shoot her again. This surprised neither of them.

“Valkyrie’s gone.” His tone was hollow. “You could never be her.”

“Ah, you don’t mean that,” Darquesse said gently. “At least, I fuckin’ hope not, that’s a really awful thing to say. Yes, Valkyrie is gone. But at the same time, _ no _ , because I _ am _ her. It’s not difficult to understand, Skulduggery-”

“_ Don’t _,” he snapped, turning his head away. 

The nose he was wearing wasn’t him at all, she couldn’t take that profile seriously. Darquesse released the revolver, which dropped right back to his side, and snapped her fingers. By her order, Skulduggery’s façade melted away, and for the first time in ten years she got to see that gorgeous skull of his. She couldn’t help it. She smiled again.

He raised his hand to his jaw, inclining his head slightly back to her.

“Okay,” said Darquesse, holding her palms out to him. “I’m gonna go on a bit of a tangent here and I need you to stay with me.”

Skulduggery was silent.

“You remember Pokémon? Yeah, I know, I never really played it but we still talked about it once or twice. You know, which starter you’d pick? You said Charmander? I _ know _ you remember. So.” She pressed her hands together, and made pointing motions to invisible examples as she continued. “When a Pokémon evolves, as they tend to do, they become a different _ kind _ of Pokémon, but they’re still the same _ Pokémon _. Are you with me?”

He was a statue.

“A Caterpie that becomes a Metapod - that doesn’t mean the Metapod is this entirely different thing, with this entirely different life. It was a Caterpie, and now it’s a Metapod, and _ now _ ,” she opened her hands again. “It’s a Butterfree, and it’s a bug _ and _ a flying type, and it’s got all these new moves and it makes new sounds, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t used to be a Caterpie. At no point did it stop being the companion it started off as. Same heart and soul. Same loyalty to their trainer. New name.”

Skulduggery had turned his head back to her.

“Does that make sense? Is that stupid? I was thinking of it on the car ride here, just in case you still didn’t get it, after all this time. Which seems to be the case.”

“I don’t understand.”

“God fucking- I don’t know what I expected-”

“I don’t understand,” he spoke over her, “why you didn’t come back to me sooner.”

Darquesse inhaled sharply. She leaned into the couch and let her head roll back. “If I’d come back to live in captivity, they’d either have killed me or I’d have changed my mind and killed them first. You know, them.” She whirled her wrist flippantly. “Everyone in the world. If I was away from all that, absolutely everyone, I could change the future. I could change what I was supposed to become. I could save my family.” She lifted her head. “And I did, didn’t I?”

Skulduggery did not answer, which was fine because that particular question had been rhetorical. He put the revolver down on a side table, stood a moment longer, then sat down next to her on the couch. Rigid. Darquesse waved her hand and heard the same rattle of the screen door she’d heard earlier, and she whistled. Her dogs came bounding inside, and she knelt on the ground to cuddle them and assure them everything was well. They lay down at her feet as she returned to Skulduggery’s side. She wound her arm through his.

“Skulduggery.” She waited until he looked at her. “I'm sorry it took so long. But I was always gonna come back.”

He tilted his head. “Of course.”

“I came a long way to see you.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“And _ you _,” she thrust a finger into his sternum, “came and lived near my explosion! Don’t think I didn’t notice that!”

“As near as I could get.”

“Right, yeah. Bloody mortals, not letting people live on volcanoes.”

Darquesse nestled further into him, resting her hand on his knee, drawing her legs up onto the couch. The dogs weren’t disturbed. And Skulduggery sat, deep in thought - and then eventually, leaned his skull on top of her head. He didn’t know what would come next. But it would be fun to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> one dog is a german shepard named xena.  
other dog is a doberman named gabrielle.  
they are therapy dogs.
> 
> the fish was named sam.
> 
> https://66.media.tumblr.com/62d9e1043447449adbf0e025ca96c0b8/tumblr_py68ynhPiH1rhfgs8o1_500.png


End file.
